The Cousin

after de Nerval

Winter can have its pleasures, as can Sundays,
when the sun smears, thin, along the pallid streets,
and you walk out with your cousin …
‘Don’t you make us wait for dinner!’ –
Mother, calling.
		             And then, in the Tuileries,
when you’re done with admiring the Sunday-best frocks
in bloom beneath sepulchral trees,
and the girl is getting chilly, and you watch
the evening mist beginning its advance …

And you head back, talking through your beautiful day
– it went so fast! – in the grip of your buttoned-up love.
And you smell, in the stair-well, on entering,
appetite swelling, the turkey, roasting.